More addresses please—US hits a half-billion Internet devices

Tablets and smart phones now outnumber PCs for first time.

Market research firm NPD Group has published a report that finds there are now more than 500 million devices in US homes that connect to the Internet. And for the first time, smartphones and tablets outnumber PCs in that tally.

NPD's Connected Intelligence report found that households now have an average of 5.7 devices (up from 5.3 just 3 months ago). That mushrooming cloud of bandwidth-demanding devices has been driven by the red-hot tablet market—there are now tablet devices in 53 percent of homes in the US, up from 35 percent in December. Smartphones also have edged into 9 million more pockets over the last three months, according to NPD, and they now account for 57 percent of cell phones in the US market.

Calling it the "post-PC" era may be a little premature. Despite the explosive growth of mobile devices, PCs still remain the main way that people connect to the Internet. NPD reports that PCs are present in 93 percent of US households—a slight, statistically insignificant dip from December. But as NPD's Director of Connected Intelligence John Buffone said, "When you look at the combined number of smartphones and tablets consumers own, for the first time ever it exceeded the installed base of computers."

The "More addresses please" part of the headline seems wrong. Of the 17 Internet-connected devices in our 3-person household that see regular use, exactly none of them connect to the Internet except through our router and so all share a single publicly routable IP address. Even if I turn on all the old devices I rarely-to-never use, I'm in no danger of exhausting even the 192.168.0.x subnet.

"Calling it the "post-PC" era may be a little premature. Despite the explosive growth of mobile devices, PCs still remain the main way that people connect to the Internet. NPD reports that PCs are present in 93 percent of US households—a slight, statistically insignificant dip from December. But as NPD's Director of Connected Intelligence John Buffone said," When you look at the combined number of smartphones and tablets consumers own, for the first time ever it exceeded the installed base of computers."

Putting business use and hard core gamers aside; I think the trend for home computers for casual use is pretty clear. As tablets are able to do what most people want from PCs, PC numbers in homes will decline and the use of more capable tablets will increase.

"Calling it the "post-PC" era may be a little premature. Despite the explosive growth of mobile devices, PCs still remain the main way that people connect to the Internet. NPD reports that PCs are present in 93 percent of US households—a slight, statistically insignificant dip from December. But as NPD's Director of Connected Intelligence John Buffone said," When you look at the combined number of smartphones and tablets consumers own, for the first time ever it exceeded the installed base of computers."

Putting business use and hard core gamers aside; I think the trend for home computers for casual use is pretty clear. As tablets are able to do what most people want from PCs, PC numbers in homes will decline and use of more capable tablets will increase.

My iPad 4 replaced my laptop as the main use it was getting was web browsing, media consumption and other things that the iPad is just as good, better or quicker at doing. Of course it is also much more compact, lighter, has dramatically better battery life and is completely mobile since it is a cellular model.

That said, there is still a need for a big screen computer that can run standard desktop apps for things like photo and video editing. I see homes with both traditional computers, mainly all in ones like the iMacs, and portable devices like tablets. The only casualty I see long term is the laptop.

I still think that if you can connect a keyboard and mouse to your tablet, and plug it into your TV, then the use case that a PC was needed for gets filled by a tablet or mobile. The only thing lacking is the raw power, mobile CPUs are good but not as good as the fan heater under my desk... but even that depends on how much CPU power you actually need.

Either way, I can now see exactly why Microsoft has screwed the desktop os in favor of a mobile one!

Either way, I can now see exactly why Microsoft has screwed the desktop os in favor of a mobile one!

Well they're certainly trying. But I have to wonder; are we heading into a future with Android and iOS ruling the home and school markets, and Windows limited to owning the business desktop environment? That's still a highly lucrative position for them, but no way I would have predicted any possibility like that a decade ago.

I fear when we run out of v4 addresses the carriers are going to start doing some crazy carrier grade NAT. IPv6 just isn't ready.

IPv6 is seeing heavy production use all over the globe... It's perfectly ready. Lower-end carriers might not be ready for it, but that's besides the point. Also, they don't HAVE TO BE READY, as IPv6 has enough backwards compatibility built-in to keep you happy when you don't get an IPv4 address anymore.

And carrier grade NAT for IPv4 is a great idea. Or rather, ANYTHING that makes it less pleasant to stay on IPv4 is a great idea... People can choose to learn to utilize their globally unique block of dozens of IPv6 addresses, or they can be locked behind NAT with IPv4 with lots of applications not working right... Any incentive for consumers would be a good thing.

sryan2k1 wrote:

I remember ~1.5 years ago my VZW device always got a public IP, since then it's a 10.0.0.0/8 address.

Your device apparently isn't LTE... If it was, it would be IPv6 all the way. The bigger arriers have made the transition... Verizon, Comcast, etc. They support IPv6, and you'll be using it soon whether you want to or not. Reality dictates we've got to switch soon. We've been putting it off for over a decade at this point, and it'll just keep getting more painful to delay it further.

I'm sure I am missing something. 34 devices and growing. There's a new desktop, printer, surface pro and Xbox Next in my future) It'll hit me as I submit. My DHCP Lease table is loaded with devices and these don't include all the friends/family that have the guest account to my wifi.

EDIT: Told you. Forgot my old EVO which is now used as an iRule remote for the Denons.

An article tackling what potential gadget buyers want to accomplish and how they wish to accomplish it with their next one or two investments, based on price range (because God knows we'd be offended if said writer took a Suze Orman approach, basing it on income, savings and debts) would be overtly appreciated. I suggest this because our consumption in this area leads me to believe there will no slowing for awhile. I believe this is a better approach to the waste than looking for solely a "green" phone because I can't imagine most being satisfied with said gadget's performance for long- unless it falls in his price & time range.

I'm sure I am missing something. 34 devices and growing. There's a new desktop, printer, surface pro and Xbox Next in my future) It'll hit me as I submit. My DHCP Lease table is loaded with devices and these don't include all the friends/family that have the guest account to my wifi.

EDIT: Told you. Forgot my old EVO which is now used as an iRule remote for the Denons.

I do not think this should come to much of a surprise. I mean, smart phones and tablets are less expensive then personal computers and more mobile.

Almost every smartphone that I have seen is worth about $500-$600, if you plan to purchase without a contract. Ignoring inflation, my 5 year old i7 with a high end gaming GPU and 4GB of memory was $800 5 years ago. Prices have gone down a lot since. I can piece together a computer that can run most games with 1080p 2xAA and 60FPS for less than most smart phones. Well, ignoring the monitory anyway.

I've pared down lately, currently we only have six devices actively in use at my home, 4 for me and 2 for my luddite roommates. My last place before with roommates, we had 15 - 16 devices on our network between 4 - 5 roommates, not counting managed switches / APs / WiFi bridges.

I fear when we run out of v4 addresses the carriers are going to start doing some crazy carrier grade NAT. IPv6 just isn't ready.

IPv6 is seeing heavy production use all over the globe... It's perfectly ready. Lower-end carriers might not be ready for it, but that's besides the point. Also, they don't HAVE TO BE READY, as IPv6 has enough backwards compatibility built-in to keep you happy when you don't get an IPv4 address anymore.

And carrier grade NAT for IPv4 is a great idea. Or rather, ANYTHING that makes it less pleasant to stay on IPv4 is a great idea... People can choose to learn to utilize their globally unique block of dozens of IPv6 addresses, or they can be locked behind NAT with IPv4 with lots of applications not working right... Any incentive for consumers would be a good thing.

sryan2k1 wrote:

I remember ~1.5 years ago my VZW device always got a public IP, since then it's a 10.0.0.0/8 address.

Your device apparently isn't LTE... If it was, it would be IPv6 all the way. The bigger arriers have made the transition... Verizon, Comcast, etc. They support IPv6, and you'll be using it soon whether you want to or not. Reality dictates we've got to switch soon. We've been putting it off for over a decade at this point, and it'll just keep getting more painful to delay it further.

That is overstating the case. While IPv6 is in use by some carriers and ISPs, only a minuscule percentage of net traffic is actually IPv6 from end to end.

Also, the transition isn't getting more painful the longer we wait. Instead, it is getting less painful. Businesses that wait will have an easier transition.

The reason I haven't made the transition at home or at work is because it has been buggy every time I have revisited the issue and done testing. Not everyone experiences problems but it isn't uncommon for running IPv6 to cause things to fail.

If everyone swith to ipv6, there will be dynamic addressing by the ISP or I will be a static ip address? It's useful to have a different address everytime so I can't be tracked by websites and avoid any limitation on traffic especially on file hosting.

If everyone swith to ipv6, there will be dynamic addressing by the ISP or I will be a static ip address? It's useful to have a different address everytime so I can't be tracked by websites and avoid any limitation on traffic especially on file hosting.

Yeah, the BitTorrent crowd is going to be upset if address-to-the-desktop goes through (keep in mind that IPv6 also has a private address space just like IPv4, so it's not a foregone conclusion).

I think this is going to have limited impact though, because "pro" torrenters apparently all use private VPN services to browse from Toronto (or wherever). I'm not a pirate so I didn't realize how popular / easy that had gotten until recently.

Keep in mind that NAT isn't at all antii-tracking. It does (inadvertently) some good things, but cookies and browser-info will track you regardless of addressing.

Either way, I can now see exactly why Microsoft has screwed the desktop os in favor of a mobile one!

Well they're certainly trying. But I have to wonder; are we heading into a future with Android and iOS ruling the home and school markets, and Windows limited to owning the business desktop environment? That's still a highly lucrative position for them, but no way I would have predicted any possibility like that a decade ago.

There was also a point where people didn't think Apple would be around in another 2 years much less what they've become. Saying that, I'm not so sure I'd make the point that Android and iOS will dominate schools and the home. I think it's more that people are buying more devices. I'm sorry but a tablet can't replace my computer no matter how hard I want to believe it can. I just get the feeling people like the cool factor of a tablet and get the misguided notion that it will replace their pc. People still buy PCs and Windows will still dominate households for some time.

As for me, I don't have as many devices as I thought I did. I have one cell phone, a 360, a ps3, 2 desktops, a blu-ray player, a receiver, all on my network. With them all being behind my router how would a lack of addresses be an issue to me? Maybe I'm not seeing it "big picture" enough.

There was also a point where people didn't think Apple would be around in another 2 years much less what they've become. Saying that, I'm not so sure I'd make the point that Android and iOS will dominate schools and the home. I think it's more that people are buying more devices. I'm sorry but a tablet can't replace my computer no matter how hard I want to believe it can. I just get the feeling people like the cool factor of a tablet and get the misguided notion that it will replace their pc. People still buy PCs and Windows will still dominate households for some time.

I think another way to look at it is not so much that the PC is being replaced, and more that the PC is getting a divorce from the Internet.

While I can browse perfectly fine on a Tablet, I can't write (for example) term papers on one. For people who only care about the Internet, it's very possible that they won't bother to maintain a PC much longer.

Re: Apple. They are so screwed. Transforming from a PC company to a Media Device company was a great move in the short term, but it's far easier for other companies to compete with Media Devices, and not as much room for innovation. Witness Samsung. Heck, even Microsoft (Surface) is getting on the bandwagon, and they are always dead last.

I don't think that Apple is going anywhere in the medium term; they have too much cash for that. But long-term? They need a new direction, the only place for the iThings to go now is "commodity".

The lack of decent TV shows drove couch potatoes to purchase Mapple tablets... now Mapple wants to solve the problem it created (too many devices) by "reimagining" TV. I applaud Mapple's 'altruism'... but imagining you can re-sell the mediocre TV content that your customers just recently fled is about as sharp as a marble.

Yea you have a point. That's presumably why MS wants Win8 to be so attached to the web; to keep it relevant. I agree about Apple though and I'm curious to see how they set themselves up for the next 5 years out.

But how many of those devices are/would be connected to the internet, as opposed to just needing to be accessible to your LAN? I'm not sure that counting network-attached devices is a good proxy for counting internet-connected devices.

As an example (and it probably helps that we're not a computer-gaming household), our tally is:

So roughly a third of our networked devices don't have access--and, IMHO, have no need of access--to the wider internet. (Yes, I'm aware that the NAS could be set up to stream content or otherwise be accessible from outside the LAN, but I prefer not to do that. It adds less value than cost for us.)

While I can browse perfectly fine on a Tablet, I can't write (for example) term papers on one. For people who only care about the Internet, it's very possible that they won't bother to maintain a PC much longer

Pretty much this. My parents use their laptop for email, casual games (solitaire, majong, bejewelled, etc.), online banking (my mum), and looking up ship plans, blueprints, models, and genealogy documents (my dad). There are literally zero things they use their PC for that they couldn't do with a tablet.

Fortunately, home wireless routers have a whole /24 to work with, so we have a while yet before things get dire.... Unless we're up to 24 addresses per person and I missed it.

In other news, carrier - grade NAT has been with us for a while now and offers all of the same problems that *any home Internet connection already does*.

Edit: on that note, the last time I saw a RFC1918 address grabbed by an application was a DirectX 3 game. There are dozens of reasons to use IPv6, but software written in the 90's isn't one of them.

/24 is 24 bits, which is a heck of a lot more then 24 address's...this alone makes me think the rest of your posts are just talking out of your ass.

Actually, it's a 24 bit mask, meaning there are 8 bits for IP addresses, working out to roughly 64, rather than 24, IP addresses. It's more likely 63, since you can't really use your netmask address as an internally routable address.

Phones are both inexpensive and and short lived in comparison to desktop computers. People use phones for phone calls and texting. Other uses are limited because of usability issues and cost.

I doubt this won't change until either A) ISPs start ripping people off with over the top by-the-bit charges and data caps the way cell phone companies do, or B) cell phone companies stop the behavior described in A. Cell data plans are wrecking the mobile experience for the average person. People genuinely fear their cellphone bills.

Tablets can fix the usability problems at the cost of being just big enough to not be taken everywhere a phone gets taken. Tablets are amazing in the home for a lot of uses. Tablets get used for more "kill the desktop" activities than phones can even dream aobut.

Fortunately, home wireless routers have a whole /24 to work with, so we have a while yet before things get dire.... Unless we're up to 24 addresses per person and I missed it.

In other news, carrier - grade NAT has been with us for a while now and offers all of the same problems that *any home Internet connection already does*.

Edit: on that note, the last time I saw a RFC1918 address grabbed by an application was a DirectX 3 game. There are dozens of reasons to use IPv6, but software written in the 90's isn't one of them.

/24 is 24 bits, which is a heck of a lot more then 24 address's...this alone makes me think the rest of your posts are just talking out of your ass.

Actually, it's a 24 bit mask, meaning there are 8 bits for IP addresses, working out to roughly 64, rather than 24, IP addresses. It's more likely 63, since you can't really use your netmask address as an internally routable address.

Hmm, I thought it was 256 addresses (or 254 usable)? I guess I should have calculated what 2^x=256 before I just said 24, but the point is that he was so wrong about something so basic, that makes me think he really has no clue what he is talking about. I on the other hand know I have no clue what I'm talking about, I just know he was wrong

Actually, it's a 24 bit mask, meaning there are 8 bits for IP addresses, working out to roughly 64, rather than 24, IP addresses. It's more likely 63, since you can't really use your netmask address as an internally routable address.

You have no fucking idea what you are talking about, let me rephrase that, you have almost no idea. You are correct that there are 8 bits available, what is the range of a byte? Oh yeah, 256.

A /24 is 256 addresses, with two reserved for the network and broadcast address. (.0 and .255 in a /24 case)

Quote:

Your device apparently isn't LTE... If it was, it would be IPv6 all the way.

Huh, that's interesting. I wonder how my IPv6 only Galaxy S3 gets to my work mail servers, that only do IPv4.

"Calling it the "post-PC" era may be a little premature. Despite the explosive growth of mobile devices, PCs still remain the main way that people connect to the Internet. NPD reports that PCs are present in 93 percent of US households—a slight, statistically insignificant dip from December. But as NPD's Director of Connected Intelligence John Buffone said," When you look at the combined number of smartphones and tablets consumers own, for the first time ever it exceeded the installed base of computers."

Putting business use and hard core gamers aside; I think the trend for home computers for casual use is pretty clear. As tablets are able to do what most people want from PCs, PC numbers in homes will decline and the use of more capable tablets will increase.

I will agree with the article. 93% is not merely "business use and hard core gamers."

Are there people replacing their PCs? Yeah. They're out there. But from this statistic, it appears they're a pretty small minority. I'd say the trend is to have both PCs and devices, not to replace PCs with devices.

Sean Gallagher / Sean is Ars Technica's IT Editor. A former Navy officer, systems administrator, and network systems integrator with 20 years of IT journalism experience, he lives and works in Baltimore, Maryland.